The Hills Give Promise 

— LYRICS — 

CARMUS; A Symphonic Poem 


ROBERT SILE1MAN H1LLYER 








Glass_PS>S5_L5 

Book _ < i- V-l 5~ 

v°i a-5 






















«-« 

























































■ J 






- 

. * . • 

: ■ - . 

• i- V - \ . ■* 














; ? r ; >' . V ' 

. v l 

- 
















• .*• 

* Yt ' 

►*' '*• . • 
























. i 











• . -*• * \ -; 

• ♦ 




. , 

f • . . • • ’ v - 

. a . 

-• 



* • 


• - . 

‘ - • - , ■ ■ 

. . . . • > 









... _ • * * -j- • • , 

• - • . 1 ’ v” -‘ • : 

- • , • f 

- . 

. - * : • • * 

- I • 


















Jf — -w «. 4 _ - 


| ♦ - »-•. - • • • m/h • *> - •* • 












HYMN TO THE SUN 























































The Hills Give Promise 


A VOLUME OF LYRICS TOGETHER WITH 

CARMUS: A Symphonic Poem 


By ROBERT SILLIMAN HILLYER 

WITH FIVE DRAWINGS BY BEATRICE STEVENS 





19 2 3 


B. J. BRIMMER COMPANY 


BOSTON 


MASSACHUSETTS 










3jrt&~ 

. -T" u H 

/? 2 . 3 


Copyright 1923 

By B. J. Brimmer Company 
Printed January, 1923 


Transferred from 
Copyright Offl.;e 

JUN , 5 


Printed in the United States 
of America 


NOV 24 *23 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


Acknowledgments are due to the editors of the 
following periodicals to reprint certain of the poems 
in this volume; The New Republic for “Elegy on a 
Dead Mermaid Washed Ashore at Plymouth Rock,” 
“Summer’s End,” and the Fourth and Eighth 
“Pastorals;” Harper’s for “A Letter” and the 
Seventh “Pastoral;” The Outlook for “Flower-Mar¬ 
ket, Copenhagen,” “For Maister Geoffrey Chaucer,” 
“Entomology,” and “Yesterday;” The Smart Set 
for the Sixth “Pastoral;” Ainslee’s for “The Tryst,” 
“Largo,” and the First and Second “Pastorals;” 
The Boston Transcript for “Her Own Shall Bless 
Her;” The Bookman for “Threnody;” The Younger 
Set for “Nocturne;” The Harvard Advocate for 
“Hymn to the Sun” and the Third “Interlude” 
from “Carmus;” Life for “The Treadmill;” The 
Kent Quarterly for “Ave!” To The Lyric thanks are 
due for the title of this book “The Hills Give Prom¬ 
ise,” taken from a poem published in that magazine. 














































































































































































































































































































. 








































































































































































































































TO LILLIAN STANLEY HILLYER 




































































CONTENTS 


BOOK I 

The Hills Give Promise 

Toward Morning, ig 
Hymn to the Sun, 22 
Hymn for Sunrise, 23 
Vahrames and His Story, 27 
A Triumph, 32 
The Temple, 35 
The Intruder, J7 
Epitaph, 38 

Flower-Market, Copenhagen, jp 

On the Boulevard, 41 

The Tryst, 42 

Andante, 44 

Largo, 45 

The Treadmill, 46 

Threnody, 47 

New England, 48 

A Letter, 4Q 

Yesterday, 50 

Summer’s End, 51 



The Sentry Speaks, 52 
Bewilderment, 53 
Winter Nocturne, 54 
Nocturne, 55 
After Some Years, 56 

Elegy on a Dead Mermaid Washed Ashore at 
Plymouth Rock, 38 
Late Spring, 60 
The Demigod, 62 
Entomology, 63 

For Maister Geoffrey Chaucer, 64 
“Her Own Shall Bless Her,” 63 
Eight Pastorals 

I Spring , put on your golden sandals , 66 

II Will you laugh at me to-day? 67 

III Trees turn silver to the gust , 67 

IV It is October in Our Hearts, 69 

V Drearily the Leaves Fall Over All Our 
Valleys , 70 

VI Here in the Field Beside the Wood , 71 

VII Great patient calm of Autumn Trees , 72 

VIII The Dark Red Winter Woods Are 
Bleak , 73 

Ave! 74 


BOOK II 


Carmus: A Symphonic Poem 

Canto I, 7p 

Interlude: Ocean, 95 
Canto II, 96 

Interlude: The Song of Frema the Earth- 
Spirit, 125 
Canto III, 127 
Interlude, 145 
Canto IV, 147 


BOOK II 

Carmus: A Symphonic Poem 

Canto I. The boy Carmus stands alone in the 
mortal Fens. He watches for an ad¬ 
venturous ship bearing dreams of wider 
lands, but the coast is shunned by mari¬ 
ners of the open sea, who dread the tidal 
shoals. He is filled with loneliness, for 
the spring urges him toward the eternal 
sea, and he cannot escape beyond the ebb 
and flood of time. In the twilight he be¬ 
holds ghosts of drowned men, and a small 
flame approaching him from the west. 
He thinks it to be only a phantom of 
the marshes, but when it is revealed 
close at hand, he is aware of a great 
beauty, the face of his immortal Comrade, 
and, leaving the flesh, he partakes of an 
eternal delight, though beneath him the 
material world is riven with storm. His 
father finds him asleep in the marshes, 
and awakes him, bidding him reenter the 
material world. He half forgets the 
ecstasy, but he cannot rest, for as time 
passes, the desire for reunion with his 
immortal comrade grows ever stronger, 
filling him with a divine discontent. 

Interlude—Ocean 

Canto II. Spring follows spring, and the youth 
Carmus still searches for his immortal 
comrade, and watches the sunset agony 


of death over the Fens. He beholds a 
light in the east, and thinks it to be his 
dawn, but it is only the moonrise of 
mortal desire. He sets up toward the 
mystic city of Istis, hoping to find his 
beloved by the river of contemplation, 
but Istis, too, is subject to the moon. 
And he meets only the images of his own 
fear. He travels on to the Christian 
city of Nalda, and in his ignorance be¬ 
lieves the cathedral to be cut from the 
living mountain. He is inspired by fair 
ceremonies to seek his living comrade, 
and finds a god whom the priests have 
crucified, and runs into the street, where 
the witch-woman of Vallamaris is wait¬ 
ing for him. She tells him of the living 
god who has escaped the wiles of the 
priests and bids him disport himself 
in her city, hoping thereby to go back 
herself, since those who have worn out 
their time in Vallamaris can return 
only through the magic of the chaste. 
In Vallamaris he beholds the spectacle 
of earthly delights which he does not 
understand, although a great drunken¬ 
ness of spirit bids him discard his iden¬ 
tity and merge into the crowd, where 
everyone is but a looking glass reflectnig 
his neighbour; until the witch-woman of 
Vallamaris, disguised with the reflec¬ 
tion of his own purity, bewitches him, 
and in a wonderful manner transforms 


[.13 ] 


him into a part of the jocund carnival 
while a cynic music perverts the theme 
of his wanderings into a dance. But the 
charm breaks when the winter comes, 
and once more Carmus is alone. 

Interlude—The Song of Frema, the Earth-Spirit 
Canto III 

The man Carmus, after long bewilder¬ 
ment,has reached the Venily of inspiration 
and fulfilment, where he tells of his jour¬ 
ney to the divine intelligence; how when 
the wind swept away the revellers, he re¬ 
solved to push on toward Venily, and the 
blizzard caught him, and phantoms pur¬ 
sued him, until he should have perished 
but for the earth-maiden, Frema, who 
delivered him from death, and in whom 
again he thought to find his beloved. 
Again disillusioned, he was driven forth 
by his unrest at the coming of spring. 
In the twilight he saw what he thought 
to be the lamp of his immortal comrade, 
and was led by the false light into the 
midst of battle, a battle of ghosts re¬ 
hearsed endlessly by the living dead. 
In the morning he sought to return to 
the love of Frema, but he could never 
return, for that was long ago and scat¬ 
tered in ashes. 


The old man Carmus, at the end of his 
journey, sits on the Mountain, and be¬ 
holds the sunset over Venily. As dark¬ 
ness comes on, he sees ever clearer, as the 
memories of his life return in their true 
meaning. His immortal comrade is there 
also, but he is no longer impatient to see 
her, for he knows that the hour of reunion 
is near, and desires to gaze once again at 
the unreal pageant of mortality from 
which he has climbed, with a great pity 
for those who shall vanish, and a delight 
in his own divinity. So he watches till 
the Dawn. 










































































































































































































































































































































































































BOOK I. 


THE HILLS GIVE PROMISE 







TOWARD MORNING 


Along the street,, the swaying lights 

s_ , 

Turn wan and sick against the grey. 
Strange mornings follow stranger nights. 
And who shall meet me with the day? 

The world, a vast, deserted nave 
Wherein stale incense faintly clings 
Is void of sacraments that save, 

Is empty of aspiring wings. 

Only the echo of my feet, 

That rises, rings, and dies away, 

Only the desolated street. 

And who shall meet me with the day? 

But no, not utterly alone 
I gaze against the foggy air; 

Thinner than mist, sharper than stone, 
White faces gather round me there. 



Faces that I have seen before 
Burst from an age’s memories, 

Faces I knew on what strange shore? 
By breakers of what stranger seas? 

Faces that hurry from the brain 
And take their independent way 

Forth into darkness, pale as rain. 

And who shall meet me with the day? 

There are evil dreams with scathing lips 
That flutter by in a flaunting dance; 
There are divine companionships, 

And there are shadows of romance. 

And one or two there are that touch 
My spirit with a killing thrust. 

Ah, we have suffered overmuch, 
Children of beauty, children of dust. 



Whither your path, poor boastful things 
Trooping fantastically to play 
Your pantomime of withered springs?. . . 
And who shall meet me with the day? 

Go forth, the long reluctant east 
Yields to the summer sun at last. 

The altar glimmers with the Feast, 
To-morrow chains the captive past. 

The morning wave with radiant strength 
Washes my heart in rainbow spray, 

And down the street’s amazing length 
Comes One to meet me with the Day. 



HYMN TO THE SUN 


(After the “Chapters of Coming Forth by Day,” 

commonly known as the “Book of the Dead.”) 

Homage to thee, O Ra! at thy tremendous rising! 

Thou risest! thou shinest! the heavens are rolled 
aside! 

Thou art the King of Gods, thou art the All-com- 
prising; 

From thee we come, in thee are deified. 

Thy priests go forth at dawn; they wash their hearts 
with laughter; 

Divine winds move in music across thy golden 
strings; 

At dusk the gods embrace thee, as every cloudy 
rafter 

Flames with reflected colour from thy wings. 


[ 22 ] 


Thou sailest over the zenith, and thy heart rejoices; 
Thy Morning Boat and Evening Boat with fair 
winds meet together; 

Before thy face the goddess Maht exalts her fateful 
feather, 

And at thy name the halls of Anu ring with voices. 


O Thou Perfect! Thou Eternal! Thou Only One! 
Great Hawk that fliest with the flying sun! 

Between the Turquoise Sycamores thou smilest 
young for ever, 

Thine image shining in the bright, celestial River. 

Thy rays are on all faces; thou art inscrutable; 

Age after age thy life renews its eager prime; 
Change whirls its dust beneath thee; thou art im¬ 
mutable; 

Maker of Time, thyself beyond all time! 


[ 23 ] 


Thou passest through the portals that close behind 
the night, 

Quickening all the dead that sleep in sorrow. 

The True of Word, the Quiet Heart arise to drink 
thy light; 

Thou art To-day and Yesterday; thou art To¬ 
morrow! 

Homage to thee, O Ra! who bringest life from slum¬ 
ber! 

Thou risest! Thou shinest! Thy radiant face appears! 

Millions of years have passed, we cannot count 
their number, 

Millions of years shall come. Thou art above the 
years! 


HYMN FOR SUNRISE 


(After Sa Seti Vernlai Venilian) 

Thrice beautiful, my sunrise friend, 
Hunting down the shadow-clingers, 
Chasing silence to an end 
With thy ranks of shining singers; 
Beautiful, companion me, 

On the land, on the sea, 

Dawn on black eternity. 

When the bells of midnight tend 
With the tide toward deadly shores, 
When the snakes of darkness bend 
From the turquoise sycamores; 
Beautiful, appear again, 

On the hill, on the plain, 

Crown thyself, great sovereign! 


I, thy crown, grant me the ray 
That shall stab the heart of night; 
Shining sword of final day, 

Blood of alchemistic light; 
Beautiful, arise from sleep, 

In the sky, in the deep, 

Pasture me, thy single sheep. 


VAHRAMES AND HIS STORY 


I am from Mount Ararat, 

My right eye has a squint; 

But my people from the plains of royal Egypt came; 
From the green vales of Hapi came my race. 

With them came the Blessed Cat 
Whose eyes of blazing flint 

Led them forth and gave the wilderness a name, 
And made of this dark hill a Holy Place. 

You know how once the Hyksos sat 
On Egypt’s throne, and sent 

Triumphant Ahmes forth in banishment and shame, 
Ahmes, the son of Thoth, the Bright-in-Grace. 

My fathers saw the true Divine 
Uncrowned and defiled; 

They sat in silence peering with narrow eyes aslant 
Upward where five long knives lay on the shelf. 


The Shepherd Kings, the filthy swine, 

Spat on them and they smiled; 

O the last Hyksos lolled at ease and was content 
Drinking the sugary wine of El-Kadelph. 

They knew how he befouled the shrine 
Of Bashtu, and beguiled 

The priestess, aye, and but for them he may have 
meant 

To desecrate the Sacred Cat Herself. 

Night and a fiery aureole 
Hanging above the Gate; 

O have you ever listened to the starry song 
And heard the far thin music, O my Brother? 

Night and a dagger in the soul, 

And mossy gods that wait 

For vengeance,—ah, my people’s arms were slim 
and strong, 

They smiled darkly across at one another. 


Through the temple dusk they stole, 

The Hyksos lay in state,— 

Snoring in Bubastis! . . .the gods had suffered 

long. . . . 

He lies there still for aught I know, my Brother. 

There is many another tale 
Of footsore wanderings, 

And how the Mighty Cat from Her Tameran shrine 
Came forth and led them over the hot plain. 

And brought them here to this green vale 
Of groves and pleasant springs, 

And on the mountain sides cool vineyards for our 
wine, 

Sloping to rolling meadows rich with grain. 

Here the eternal nightingale 
Memorably sings 

Beneath the cloudy moon, till in the night’s decline 
Come intervals of silver slanting rain. 


Friend, friend, you think me mad, and yet 
Between us two there lies 

Only this much, that from a waning world you come, 
But from Tamera came my deathless race. 

Think not her living Sun has set, 

For in new Easts arise 

New dawns, and soon the veiling mist shall vanish 
from 

The sleepy desert’s heavy-lidded face. 

And you in all your pride forget 

How near at hand there lies 

The same, the worldless, the inevitable home, 

The starry sands, the wanderer’s resting-place. 

Out of the midnight clouds that press 
My soul to death, I hear 

A voice among the sinking stars that ever sings 
Of Egypt and the Grey Cat of the Nile. 


The sweetness of lost holiness 
Comforts me as appear 

The shadows of the patient form with folded wings, 
And the lone light in darkness of Her smile. 

0 Living-Dead, you cannot guess 
How infinitely clear 

I hear a voice among the sinking stars that sings, 
“Again I come, after a little while.” 


A TRIUMPH 


I rode, thrice-crowned, into my capital. 

Behind me rode my knights, five thousand strong. 
From wall to battlemented wall 
Thundered tremendous song. 

Cheers swept my people, who had come to throng 
The conqueror’s way with praise and festival. 

Strange beasts marched solemnly in my parade, 
Jingling with jewelled cloths from captive lands, 
And slaves with peacock plumes to shade 
The imperial face and hands, 

And lovely royal prisoners, and bands 
Of hostages, half-haughty, half-afraid. 

From every window rippled tapestry; 

Sweet-scented garlands hung from house to house; 
The shouting children climbed to see 
Among the ilex boughs, 

Until it seemed as if a fair carouse 

Had blossomed on each dark, triumphal tree. 


But suddenly my heart turned slowly round 
And stopped. My face was wet with starting fear. 
Above the noise a little sound 
Beat keenly in my ear, 

Grew slowly to a voice, and words came clear 
Over a hush wherein all life was drowned. 

“Now is the moment beautiful, O King, 

To leave your triumph; now you will be all 
A shining memory of spring 
Unblighted by the fall. 

Come away and dream in my oblivious hall, 

For the garlands in the wind are withering.” 

One shadow crossed my path; the city blurred. 
Another quenched the faces one by one 
Like final torches; then a third 
Careened against the sun. 

“Strike louder music if my play be done!” 

The silence walled me thickly. No one heard. 


. . . “And after you have slept, you shall arise 

A King no more, but one who travels through 
The world, singing what never dies, 

Though none give ear to you. 

In secret music life shall flower anew; 

But here, the dead. . . Night crashed against 
my eyes. 

New day has dawned. My people are blown dust. 
Even the memory of my realm is lost. 

I wander, singing as I must 
A homesick music tossed 

To the empty winds and the outlands white with 
frost. . . 

Sometimes I tremble with an old distrust. 


THE TEMPLE 


Chaste and eternal colonnade, 

Beauty's high and ruined throne, 

In time's tangled everglade 
You alone 

Shall not be foul and overgrown. 

Alien to our dying generation, 

We turn to you, 0 living stone, 

For vindication. 

Still on your altars, unarrayed, 

Where mouldy leaves are idly blown, 

The ancient faith sits undismayed 
Over the strown 

Dust of the gods that were her own. 

Still shall we turn with exquisite oblation 
To you, O fair and overthrown, 

For vindication. 


War and lust of war have laid 
Waste this world from zone to zone; 
Hideous piety has made 
Men disown 

All the wonders life has shown. 

From these years of sordid desolation 
We turn to you, 0 bright unknown, 
For vindication. 

Man once made you; you atone 
For all his folly and his desecration; 
He turns to you, 0 living stone, 

For vindication. 


[36] 


THE INTRUDER 


It is not, Death, that we resent your power; 

Life moves by that as well as by increase, 

But you invade our welfare and our peace, 

You threaten us before your appointed hour. 

We know you, sombre master of release 
From all the sick repinings that devour 
Our later years, but why should you deflower 
Our youth as well, and bid the music cease? 

God knows the ages of our kind are dust; 

We drift from war to war, from hate to hate, 

And all our loves still falter into lust; 

But there are rifts among the clouds of fate 
Through which the sun might come if you would 
wait, 

And let us dance our moth-dance down the gust. 


EPITAPH 


Here by this quiet pool, 

Under the quiet sun, 

Frema remembers 
How rose the beautiful 
Lord from oblivion, 

Flame from the embers. 

She dreams in light among 
Legions of mortals whom 
Darkness convinces; 

Dreams, till she hear the young 
Prince by her lonely tomb 
Calling his Princess. 


[38] 


FLOWER-MARKET, COPENHAGEN 

In the grey November haze 
Gold and scarlet flowers shine 
Like a moveless line 
Of torches all ablaze. 

Down the long row 
Behind the flowers, glow 
The faces of old women, framed 
In shawls as gay as any garden. 

Blatant youth is shamed 
Where age is so serenely young; 

These faces never harden, 

These smiles have never learned deceit; 

The years go by on stealthy feet, 

And never trample souls among 
The quiet byways of a garden. 

They smile at me, hold up their prize 
Bouquets to catch my wandering eyes: 

“Good-day, good-day; it’s going to rain!” 

I nod, and swing my cane. 

Chrysanthemum and holly bough, 

Late daisy, fern, and pale carnation,— 

I can’t commit myself just now! 

St. Anthony’s supreme temptation, 

Had the tempter known his powers, 

Would have been a flower-stall; 

Dear ladies, I’m in love with all 
Of you, and all your flowers! 


This old woman brought to town 
Her good cat, Hilda, to assist; 

They talk, she looking kindly down 
On the grey whiskers rimed with mist 
And great gold eyes, while Hilda’s purrs 
Denote what happiness is hers. 

Flower-cat and woman, who 
Could decently resist the two? 

How much for these red dahlias here? 

Two kroner? “Yes, they’re cheap this year 
Ah, thank you!” She adjusts her shawl 
To shelter Hilda from the showers. 

Down the shining line I go; 

Flowers and faces in a row, 

Through the drizzle smile and glow; 

Dear ladies, I’m in love with all 
Of you, and all your flowers! 


ON THE BOULEVARD 


Two old men walked together down the street, 
Two late survivors of atrocious years, 

Comparing memories of sharp deceit, 

And crimes wherein they were the pioneers. 

A child ran by the cronies, and looked back. 

They turned to one another then, and smiled, 
Smudging her whiteness with imagined black, 
And whispering cynic futures for the child. 

Seven score years grinned shamelessly at five. 
Half-wondering, half shy, she turned again, 
Thinking that if her father were alive 
He’d be just like those kind old gentlemen. 


THE TRYST 


Neither spoke; the silence clung, 

They were old that had been young. 

Through notched hills the moonlight 
Two lights plumbed the dark below; 
Everything was just the same, 

Even the quiet silver glow 
On the shingle roofs like snow;— 

But a stranger bore her name. 

Here where young desire was mated 
To the memory of a face; 

Where long vigil desolated 
Every beauty of the place, 

Came at last the hour of grace, 

But not he, the long-awaited. 


came; 


[42] 


There they stood, and there they slew 
Each the hope the other nourished. 
Ghosts of flesh and blood, they drew 
Shadowy life from shades that perished, 
And the dreams that they had cherished 
Seemed the stranger, now they knew. 

Neither spoke; the silence clung. 

They were old that had been young. 


ANDANTE 


The melody of what has passed 
Blows backward on the evening breeze; 
Beneath dark portals bolted fast 
Against the west, 

I hear faint pipes from overseas 
Playing their music of unrest. 

Cease and be silent, wistful reeds; 

I hear you, but I turn away. 

Time, the grey monk, has told his beads, 

And I am locked 

Outside the Gate of Yesterday, 

That would not open if I knocked. 

Ahead the path is deep and black 
And empty, but there is no choice. . . 

The dusty traveller turns his back 
On doors of peace, 

And hears through leagues of night a \ 
That follows him and will not cease. 


LARGO 


Wherever I seek my path, there failure is before me; 

He waits me at the final crest of the sloping day, 

Holding forth to my sweating hands the shrivelled 
branches 

From which the peach blooms of desire have fallen 
away. 

Tired and flushed at dusk from unrewarded climbing, 

Beneath warm summer forests I stretch myself and 
sleep; 

Waking under the midnight, I am the jest of winter; 

Against the pines the drifted snow is piling deep. 

Wherever I would dream, there failure is before me, 

And whither I have struggled, there his strong wings 
fly; 

He plucks the familiar star that I capture in night 
waters, 

And sets it back in voids of inaccessible sky. 


THE TREADMILL 


Here you sit in this autumn room, 

Three floors over the city street, 

Clatter of horses, blaring horns, 

Cries of children, patter of feet; 

Here you sit with your life to arrange, 

Moving pawns on the board of doom. 

Wondering, what is it all about? 

Dull detail and grandiose scheme, 

Frantic thinking forward and back 
For a meal or some romantic dream, 

Ghastly round that will not change 

Till the mind grows black and the sun goes out 

Here you sit in this darkening room, 

Wondering, what is it all about? 

Moving pawns on the board of doom 

Till the mind grows black and the sun goes out 


[ 46 ] 


THRENODY 


I made a slow lament for you, lost magic 
Of schoolboy love and dreams in shadowed places, 
Where passed in visible parade, the tragic 
Desires of vanished gods and women’s faces. 

On violins beneath long undisputed 
New England orchards sombred by the spirit 
Of endless autumn, I awoke the muted 
Strings of your lament, but none could hear it. 

Except, perhaps, one passerby, who skirted 
The upland fields in that avoided spot; 

And, marvelling at the music in deserted 
Orchards, hurried on, and soon forgot. 


NEW ENGLAND 


Shutters bang in the wind outside; 

Cobwebs hang from the mildewed walls; 

Stale, damp mould in the lifeless cold; 
Doors flung wide to the darkened halls. 

Love and strength of the new, keen race 
Lie full length where the weeds grow high, 

All things swept to the past except 
This ruined place the wind roars by. 

Blank disaster of empty windows; 

Broken plaster strewn on the floor; 

Darkness spills from the wild, bleak hills, 
And the winter wind blows under the door. 


A LETTER 


Last night I wrote a letter to my friend: 

I said, “Come back, we two are getting old; 

Our separate lives wear on; the years are cold, 
And loneliness grows bitter toward the end.” 

I called you back, but you shall not behold 
Those wise, sad words that my desire has penned; 
Last night I wrote what I shall never send, 

The page your white hands never shall unfold. 

There in my desk it lies; pride guards the key; 
And pride, alas, is stronger than desire. 

Years hence perhaps some stranger, pityingly, 

Will yield the faded secret to the fire, 

Where it will join in dust those separate dead, 
Sorrow who wrote and Love who never read. 


YESTERDAY 


Across the sand the sparkle dies away, 

The sun, the waves, the ebbing afternoon 
Slide westward, and the shadows on the dune 
Deepen against the caravan of grey. 

But we who stand here have become immune 
To all this sombre glory; we who stay 
See but the passing of another day, 

And from our summers, yet another June. 

O, we had spoken, we had answered once 
To this vast query that has found us dumb; 
Out of our quickened spirit some response, 
Some hugely eager challenge would have come, 
Where, blinded by our wisdom, now we glance 
Unmoved upon this infinite romance. 


[50J 


SUMMER’S END 


And now at sunset, ripples flecked with gold 
Leap lightly over the profounder blue; 

The wind is from the north, and days are few 
That still divide us from the winter cold. 

O, it was easy in the morning dew 
To make the vow that never should be old, 

But now at dusk the words are not so bold,— 
Thus have I learned. How fares the hour with you? 

A heron rises from the trembling sedge, 

His vigil at an end. Mine too is done. 

A late sail twinkles on the watery edge, 

And up the shore lights flicker one by one. 
Seasons will change before tomorrow’s sun, 

So speaks the dune-grass on the windy ledge. 


THE SENTRY SPEAKS 


The autumn equinox has reached my land, 

And on the sundial weary night and day 
Resolve their quarrel for the nonce, and lay 
Twelve hours of sun and dark on either hand. 
The yellow smoke of fern is blowing away 
Over the hilltops with the vagrant band 
Of southward flying ducks. But understand 
Though all these follow summer, I shall stay. 

Go thou with them, I know thy hopes are set 
On warmer gardens than this fading place, 

But someone must remain, lest earth forget 
Her calendar, and sleep in the embrace 
Of endless winter; lest the snow efface 
The river’s memory of the violet. 


BEWILDERMENT 


Now all the autumn night is vast and still; 

Curled round our feet in valleys white with haze, 
And from the tall composure of this hill 
We watch the constellations go their ways. 

Below, the dead are sleeping in their shrouds, 

Nor ever wake to shadow our delight; 

And quiet as the dead, the alien crowds 
Slumber in ashen cities all the night. 

We two alone are living, we alone 
Sail on the world’s high deck through starry seas. 
Nourished by love, our human souls have grown 
Into the stature of divinities. 

We two are Life; all else is past and dead. . . . 
Who spake these words? What mean the things he 
said? 


[ 53 ] 


WINTER NOCTURNE 


Some of that August day’s long-dead delight 
Came back to me, as on a winter hill 
I saw red sunset fall away and spill 
Its scattered jewels on the lap of night. 

We two had always been so calm, so still, 

That silence was not lonely, and despite 
The shadow deepening over snowy white, 

A warmth, as of your presence, smote the chill. 

Whatever men may call the real, the true, 

This much I know indeed, that an immense 

And actual radiance such as only you 

Have ever given to my mortal sense 

Gleamed on the hillside and then vanished hence 

And all that winter night the south wind blew. 


NOCTURNE 


There was a fountain in the court 
That played all night, 

But the night was short, 

And the morning grey. 

There was a whip-poor-will that sang 
In the wan moonlight, 

And music sprang 
From the shattered spray. 

I lay in the grass and touched your hand; 

You drew it away. 

You understand 

The flames that start from the touch of a hand, 
And you drew it away; 

And desire froze at the sorry part 
I was forced to play, 

And fear like a north wind fanned 
My tropic heart, 

Lest you arise and fly me. 

I held my breath and heard 
Moth wings whir by me, 

I heard a petal fall by the garden wall, 

And a dreaming bird 
Stir in imagined flight. 

There was a fountain in the court 
That played all night,— 

But the night was short. 

[ 55 ] 


AFTER SOME YEARS 


We do not suffer much now; it is over. 

We wanted to forget; we have forgotten. 

We tore our hearts with healing; they are healed. 

You have gained peace, you who were once a lover, 
The garlands of your sacrifice are rotten; 

Your garden has become a clover field. 

Only at times, in intervals of quiet, 

When music gravely claims the twilight air, 

And melts the sinews of some bitter thong, 

Your heart feels something of the stress and riot 
That flung it between rapture and despair; 
Something awakes that has been sleeping long. 

You say: I am so strong now, I could chance 
To play with these old things a while, and taste 
The occult savour that I knew so well, 


[ 56 ] 


Yet, what was this great love,—a strange romance, 
A fierce three autumns, passionately chaste,— 
Youth’s customary path, no miracle. 

Even that frosty thought, so fugitive, 

Shows what is lost beyond all hope to gain, 

And just how far from love we two have gone. 

We did forget, we healed ourselves, we live, 

But we have lost essential joy and pain: 

We lived; we died; and having died, live on. 


[ 57 ] 


ELEGY 


On a Dead Mermaid Washed Ashore 
at Plymouth Rock 

Pallidly sleeping, the Ocean’s mysterious daughter 

Lies in the lee of the boulder that shattered her 
charms. 

Dawn rushes over the level horizon of water 

And touches to flickering crimson her face and her 
arms, 

While every scale in that marvelous tail 

Quivers with colour like sun on a Mediterranean 
sail. 

Could you not keep to the ocean that lulls the 
equator, 

Soulless, immortal, and fatally fair to the gaze? 

Or were you called to the North by an ecstasy greater 

Than any you knew in those ancient and terrible 
days 

When all your delight was to flash on the sight 

Of the wondering sailor and lure him to death in the 
watery night? 


Was there, perhaps, on the deck of some far away 
vessel 

A lad from New England whose fancy you failed to 
ensnare? 

Who, born of this virtuous rock, and accustomed to 
wrestle 

With beauty in all of its forms, became your despair, 

And awoke in your breast a mortal unrest 

That dragged you away from the south to your 
death in the cold northwest? 

Pallidly sleeping, your body is shorn of its magic, 

But Death gives a soul to whatever is lovely and dies. 

Now Ocean reclaims you again, lest a marvel so 
tragic 

Remain to be mocked by our earthly and virtuous 
eyes, 

And reason redeems already what seems 

Only a fable like all of our strange and beautiful 
dreams. 


LATE SPRING 


Blue light of dusk on the windowsill, 

Green sunset light in the sky; 

The cherry tree on our little hill 
Has buried itself in bloom. 

A wounded duck has dropped a quill 
In our yard as he fluttered by. 

Where have you gone? I have thought of you 
All day, and your quiet smile. 

I should not have thought,—that much I knew 
But somehow I am not wise. 

Four years to forget, four years! too few! 

Four lives were too little while. 

There is not a breath of wind to-night, 

But I hear the garden stir. 

Down in the darkness out of sight 
It prepares a wild surprise, 

To burst on the world in green and white, 

To smile from a thousand eyes. 


Where have you gone? I have sown a crop 
Of dangerous dreams to-day. 

I have seen your face. . . Stop! 

You shall not break my peace! . . 

(The cherry tree on the hillock top 
Is white with a starry spray.) 


[ 61 ] 


THE DEMIGOD 


I wearied of disaster; 

I swore to murder Fate, 

And make myself the master 
Of my terrene estate. 

I slew my foe, and gaily 
Supplanted him I slew, 

And do more damage daily 
Than Fate could ever do. 


[ 62 ] 


ENTOMOLOGY 


In August as I lay upon a hill 
I saw black ants and red ones in the grass; 
Well-bred, adept, they laboured with a will, 

And stepped aside to let each other pass. 

I saw two battling spiders come to terms 
And skate away without another word; 

I also saw a beetle and three worms, 

Which I just mentioned to a passing bird. 

Small jungles, and a ground-mole come to grief, 
(If one can judge by such a skeleton), 

A bob-tailed bug upon a strawberry leaf, 

The which I tickled just to see him run. 

These I observed, and many other things, 

But I’ll not bore you with particulars; 

At any rate, the afternoon took wings, 

And left the insect, Me, beneath the stars. 


[ 63 ] 


FOR MAISTER GEOFFREY CHAUCER 


A bard there was, and that a worthy wight, 

Who, from the time that he began to write, 

Served God and beauty with an humble mind, 
And most of all he knew and loved mankind. 
Laughing he was, and quick at many a jest, 

The Lord loves mirth,—the devil take the rest! 
A simple grace ere wine be poured at dinner, 

A ready hand outstretched to saint and sinner, 

A prayer at times, not lengthy but devout, 

This was our poet’s faith without a doubt. 

Travel he loved, and wonders had to tell 
Of royal France and Italy as well, 

And everywhere he went, his furtive pen 
Took down the secrets of his fellow men, 

Their faces and their stories, high and low, 

From lordly Petrarch and Boccaccio 
Unto the meanest villein who could hold 
A tavern audience with the tales he told. 

But with his scrivening, he never swerved 
From duty to King Edward whom he served, 

And though he roamed both France and Italy, 
England was where he always longed to be, 

And thither he returned with magic spoils 
That England might have pleasure of his toils, 
And hear his brave, chivalric stories sung 
By English pilgrims in the English tongue. 

Noble his spirit was, and gay his heart. 

A judge of wine, a master of his art, 

He loved all men, nor was ashamed to show it; 
He was a very parfit gentil poet, 

Gentil in life and parfit in his rhyme,— 

God send us such another in our time! 


“HER OWN SHALL BLESS HER” 


By Gate of Autumn at the Muses’ Sign,— 

A most rare tavern, hid from vulgar fame,— 

Each year we gossips gather round the flame, 

I and some roystering young friends of mine. 
There through the night, with many an antick game, 
We sport and chirp and cap the noble line; 

And every year, in turn, we pledge the wine, 

The speakers changing, but their words the same: 

“Poet and learned clerk and mariner, 

I give you Gloriana!” Every ghost 
In Muses’ Tavern by the Gate of Death 
Leaps to his feet and drinks, while through the blur 
Of time’s too many voices, rings the toast: 

Our Sovereign Shepherdess, Elizabeth! 


EIGHT PASTORALS 
I 

Spring, put on your golden sandals, 
Stride across the waning day, 

Then at twilight chase the vandals 
From our ruined world away. 

Clear our heaven where the seven 
Constellations watch and pray. 

Melt the icy heart of winter, 

Soothe the forest, tempest-tossed. 
Though the shafts of moonlight splinter 
On the crystals of the frost, 

Make earth tingle with a single 
Dream from all that she has lost. 

Shod in beauty, swift newcomer, 

Touch me also with your wand, 

That I may divine the summer 
In the first tight-folded frond, 

From one tender hint, the splendour 
Of the garden just beyond. 


II 


Will you laugh at me to-day, 

If I come to you and say, 

“I can touch you with a magic 
That will steal your hate away”? 

Can I hope that you will see 
Friendship in your enemy? 

Even if you do, I warrant, 

You will mock the more at me. 

I should so much like to try. 

But indeed Fd rather die 

Than be put to such confusion,— 

I had better pass you by. 

Ill 

Trees turn silver to the gust, 

Water whitens on the pond, 

Thick blue shadow drifts between 
The birches and the hill beyond, 

So smoky dark that every frond 
Of fern is luminously green. 


[ 67 ] 


With each unexpected thrust 
Of wind from the descending cloud, 
Comes the sound of leafy surf 
Where forest billows heave and crowd, 
And a meadow-lark, with loud 
Alarum, startles from the turf. 

Now the sky breaks overhead. 

Strip, and set your body free 
To the tingling rods of rain. 

There is no one here to see, 

No one here but you and me 
Dancing down the livid plain. 

Water splashes where we tread; 

Lightning flashes as we spin 
White against the purple storm. 

Drink the keen sensation in 
Over all your gleaming skin, 

For the sunlight will be warm. 


IV 


It is October in our hearts. 

The vineyards of the years are ripe. 
From thinning forests Pan departs, 
And we shall never hear his pipe 
Playing across the hill. 

0 it was well to drink our fill 
Of pleasure while the sun was high, 
And it is well beneath the still 
Suspense of twilight-heavy sky 
To drink our fill of sleep. 

The hush that follows song is deep, 

Far deeper than the song was gay, 
And autumn pasturing ghostly sheep 
Among the fields of yesterday 
Is shepherd of our dreams. 


[ 69 ] 


Heap the dead leaves beside the streams 
Where youth has heard the summer song; 
Heap the bonfire that redeems 
The dead who wake in light, and throng 
The shadow where it darts. . . . 

It is October in our hearts. 

V 

Drearily the leaves fall over all our valleys, 
Dripping from the forest on the tall, mute hill; 
Orange light is leaking down the bare-boughed alleys 
Upon the russet shadow where the leaves lie still. 

Breathless in the dim brake, desolate November 
Watches how the dark woods silently are thinned; 
Scattered on the brown earth, withered seeds re¬ 
member 

Hanging in the sunlight and swinging in the wind; 

Myriads of dreams that will sparkle out of slumber, 
Clear as nether stars beneath another summer sky,— 
But stronger is the hold of the leaves that encumber 
The weary feet of pilgrims who know not where to 
die. 


[ 70 ] 


VI 


Here in the field beside the wood 
The grass is withered where he stood 
From dawn till dark day after day, 
Watching and listening, until 
Wasted with loneliness he lay 
Under the autumn twilight-grey. 

His sheep are scattered over the hill. 

When eyes were blind and lips were dumb, 
Then did she think of him, and come 
Back to the pastureland they knew 
And meet a phantom in the chill 
Morass of sedges white with dew?— 

But miles are long and years are few. 

His sheep are scattered over the hill. 

Here in the field beside the wood 
The grass is withered where he stood. 


[ 71 ] 


VII 


Great, patient calm of autumn trees 
Against the horizontal sun; 

Most moving of life’s tragedies 
Till life itself be done. 

The night will give you other fields 
And beauties too immense for tears; 
The night will forge you starry shields 
To guard you from your fears. 

But here beneath the patient trees 
Twisted and huge against the sun, 

Life and its long futilities 

That never should have been begun 

Fall withered, and are done. 


[ 72 ] 


VIII 


The dark red winter woods are bleak 
With something that they dare not speak. 
Silent they stand, and will not stir 
To greet the hurrying messenger 
Who passes on across the hill, 

Leaving them desolate and still. 


What memories of summer hymns 
Are frozen in those leafless limbs? 
What secrets, folded in the bud, 

Lie hidden, till the bursting flood 
Of resurrection call them forth 
When younger lovers wander north? 

Yet, in this January hour, 

We care not if tomorrow’s flower 
Waits eager-petaled to arise 
Or with the dead for ever lies 
Here in this quiet, lonely land, 
Where dark red trees of winter stand. 


[73] 


AVE 


Peace be with you, familiar trees 

That guard the hilly land and river ways; 

And you, my oak, guard still the memories of nights 
and days 

Sun swept, rain dark, and always beautiful. 

You understand, 

Great oak upon the hill, 

And you forest trees that pull the wind down the 
valley’s length 

With your tempestuous strength! 

Keep tryst with me, my friends, my friend, 

At the journey’s end. 


From exile unto exile wandering, 

I hear across the sea the trees that sing 
The leafy chorus of eternal spring. 

On wild black horses down the hurrying skies 
The riders from the hills go by in storms, 

And cry aloud: “The Sleeper shall awake! 

The moon is waning and the Sun shall rise!” 
Then running forth, I watch slow flame that forms 
A trembling arc of colour on the lake. 

Bathed in that white, ecstatic dawn, I do not mark 
Time’s footsteps on the bridge whose stones are 
day and dark; 

How earthly seasons insignificant go past 
Like autumn shadows trooping down the blast. 


[74 1 


Familiar trees, green be your boughs! 

The exile comes again to count your leaves. 

My tree, upon your hilTJ build my house beneath 
whose eaves 

Shall nest the homing love who never dies. 

Through sun and rain, 

Great oak, keep vigil still against the hostile skies; 
You also, sentinels of the road 
That leads to my abode! 

Peace be with us, my friends, my friend, 

At the journey’s end. 
























* 








































































































































































































































































































































































- * 



















































































































































BOOK II 


CARMUS: 


A SYMPHONIC POEM 


































































CANTO I 


The tall salt grass stood shoulder-high 
In the marsh where slow tides came and went; 
Only the sea, the marsh, and the sky, 

And the April wind with languid hands; 
Only these and a boy who bent 
A path through the grass with a hesitant tread, 
Now balancing high on a tufted root, 

Now sinking into the soggy sands, 

Till the tops of the reeds were over his head, 
And the water bubbled underfoot. 

Eyes level with the grass had guessed 
A swimmer on a pale green sea, 

His head mounting over a crest 
Then dipping under fearlessly, 

For his hair was tangled and wet as though 
He had been fighting the undertow, 

And the reeds moved with a billowy motion 
Like the landward swell of the summer ocean. 


The boy 
C annus 
stands alone 
in the mortal 
Fens. 


179] 


He watches 
for an ad¬ 
venturous 
ship hearing 
dreams of 
wider lands, 


hut the coast 
is shunned by 
mariners of 
the open sea, 
who dread the 
tidal shoals. 


Each time he rose from the rank morass 
He looked out over the rippling grass, 

Far out to sea with an eager gaze, 

Hoping some full-sailed ship would pass; 
For every chance ship, unaware, 

Unloaded a cargo of riches there,— 

Dreams to enact heroic plays 

On the stage of empty nights and days, 

And people those unfrequented ways. 

Few passed by the menacing coast; 

The province of Fens was shunned by most. 
Those dunes and quicksands, so men said, 
Were haunted by the living-dead. 

Yet the marsh had children, held by a strange 
Love for the outlands still unsung; 

They lived like reeds, nor longed for change, 
And the tides crept secretly among 
The roots that fed their being, while 
The world retreated mile by mile. 


The world was farther than ever to-day; 
This was the sunrise of the year, 

The earth’s soft answer that turns away 
The wrath of men who curse their sphere, 
Her one communicable joy, 

When love is frenzied, and enemies 
Meeting by chance in the sunlight, seize 
Each other’s hands, and know not why. 
But the loneliest time of year to the boy 
So small between flat marsh and sky, 

With only the sea and the whispering sedge 
For friends, till his father came at night, 
And told him tales by the sooty light 
In their fisher’s shack at the water’s edge. 
The spring was a millrace, churning his heart; 
He turned, as a friend, to the reeds of the 
marsh; 

He felt leaves swell on his fingertips, 

And the boisterous sap quicken and start; 

He too would struggle out of the harsh 
Husk of the autumn, and open his lips 


He is filled 
with loneli¬ 
ness, for the 
spring urges 
him toward 
the eternal 
sea and he 
cannot escape 
beyond the 
ebb and flood 
of time. 


In the 
twilight he 
beholds ghosts 
of drowned 
men 


To the sun and wind. 

Music dinned 

On his ears, but still the tide was creeping 
Slow through the rotten sands, and seeping 
Among the roots of anchored reeds. 

Year after year the tides came through, 
And every spring the green blades started, 
And every autumn they scattered their seeds, 
While the travelling ocean came and de¬ 
parted. 

Ah God! there was nothing here that was 
new! 

No ship came, and the afternoon 
Burned down to a red line over the wold; 

A dull red glow in the western sky, 

A dull red glow in the long lagoon. 

To the east the sea turned iron cold, 

And the hands of drowned men glimmered by. 
Carmus faced to the west, and saw 
A single flame in the open maw; 

A slender light like a candleflame 


[82] 


Hovered against the scarlet crescent, 

Then floated free from the dim sunset. 
Over the distant marsh it came, 

Skimming the grass in a phosphorescent 
Haze to the place where Carmus stood. 

He watched it, only half-afraid; 

In the twilight sedges he had met 
Shapes that were neither light nor shade, 
The people of the solitude. 

He watched it flit through the atmosphere, 
And slowly grow as it floated near, 

Until it sank from the top of the grass 
Into the path that he had made, 

Paused, and turned to him, like a veiled 
Woman, wavering and afraid. 

He shrank away to let her pass, 

Not daring to touch her in the gloam, 

His heart hammered; his breath failed; 

He wished he were safe at home. 


and a small 
flame ap¬ 
proaching 
him from the 
west. 


He thinks it 
to he a phan¬ 
tom of the 
marshes, 


but when it is 
revealed close 
at hand, he is 
aware of a 
great beauty , 
the face of his 
immortal 
comrade , 


Then as the clouds break for the sun, 

In a triangle of dazzling light, 

The veil broke, and before his sight 
Carmus saw a shining face 
Whiter than any he had spun 
On the delicate fabrics of the night. 

Fear fell, and in its place 
Wonder flooded his noisy blood; 

Under that sudden sun, the bud 
Of boyhood trembled to feel unclose 
The petals of the impatient rose. 

A glance shy as a lightning gleam, 

Hair in a blown cloud filled with stars, 

Eyes so deep that to look at them 
Was to feel his own grow big with tears. 

There was a music rising with soft insistence 
Out of the ground, out of the caves of the sea; 
There was a light laughing across ineffable 
distance, 

She was the radiance, and the music, She. 


[84] 


The stones of all the autumns the world has 
known 

Were piled together into a mouldy prison, 

And all the springs in the world had burst 
the walls, and risen 

In gardens of glad fruition out of the stone. 

There was a face in the twilight under the 
waning 

Sky, the face the dying pilgrim knows, 

Herself the leaves and roots, herself the music 
and colour, raining 

Seeds of unfinished beauty from the perpetual 
rose. 

There she stood amid them in benediction, 

Her white arms raised to the stars about her 
face, 

Life triumphant, dewy with resurrection, 

The crystal hung in the gulf of space. 

Unearthly joy that knew no law 

Of fleshly senses, but filled them all. 

He could not tell whether he saw 

Or heard or felt the miracle. 


[85] 


and leaving 
the flesh, he 
partakes of 
an eternal 
delight, 


Was she a light? was she a song? 

He looked on fire, heard voices call; 

Fiercely he struggled out of the strong 
Grip of sense; his body fell 
In the path; his soul shook off the clinging 
Flesh and leaped in the starlight, singing. 

Through layers of night to the verge of space 
The soul pierces in shafts of fire, 

Through whirling planets that interlace 
In the pattern of absolute desire. 

Who holds the lamp that guides the flier 
Up the white steps to the open door, 

Over the hush where suns expire, 

To the lofty house he has known before? 

The bird upsprings from his resting place, 
From the nest fashioned of reeds and mire, 
And points to the upper sky full pace, 

A phoenix out of his ashen pyre. 


His wings start ripples of sound from the lyre 
Of starlight,—to break on what far shore? 
Then on through arches dimmer and higher 
To the lofty house he has known before. 

Whose is this half-remembered face? 

This voice that calls him up through the dire 
Void where hardly a star dares trace 
The outer rim of its widest gyre? 

And draws him up on a silver wire 
Of song through the multitudinous roar, 

A single theme through the dissonant choir, 
To the lofty house he has known before? 

You are my half-self made entire; 

In you I have found my life once more, 

For the mortal days of a god aspire 
To the lofty house he has known before. 


though 
beneath him 
the material 
world is riven 
with storm. 


Clouds pour over the face of the moon; 

Writhing dragons with wings of thunder; 

Wan auroral lights festoon 

The blackened sky as the stars go under; 

Whirlwinds leap on the sea with spiral claws, 

Gash the wildly tossing arms that shield her 
face, 

Seize the ships, and splinter timbers into 
straws, 

Lift the waves in whirling maelstroms out of 
space; 

Land and ocean wrestle as they wrestled when 
the world was younger; 

Chaos screams in exultation through the dark; 

Storm wolves rage across the sand with eyes 
of terrible hunger, 

Drowning with roars the frightened hound’s 
bark. 

Rain rolls in a solid wheel and crushes the 
rest of the battle, 

Flogs the ground with rotary shafts of steel, 

Drums against the cliffs with a hollow rattle, 


Until there is nothing heard but the sound 
of her gnashing wheel. 

Sullenly moaning, the waves of the sea are 
beaten under; 

The wind is trampled like a petal into the mud; 

And then the rain itself rolls off in a cloak 
of thunder; 

The wounded world drips with a rhythmic 
thud. 

Ocean calls to soil, Are you hurt to death, my 
brother? 

The broken sedges flap in rasping pain; 

Slowly the land and water divide from one 
another, 

Slowly the wind shakes from the ground 
again. 

Then all the mist glows, a luminous pearl 

Of hinted colour sifted into grey; 

Through fold on fold of fog uncurl 

The twisting fronds and tendrils of the day . . . 


His father 
finds him 
asleep in the 
marshes, and 
awakes him, 


bidding him 
reenter the 
material 
world. 


Carmus! Carmus! Carmus! over the sedge 

A bearded voice repeats it like a charm. 

A tall old man fights splashing out of the west. 

He comes to the end of the path; there at the 
edge 

Of the beaten grass, his head on his folded 
arm, 

Lies Carmus, sleeping like a young heron in 
its nest. 

“What are you doing here in the marsh all 
night? 

The tide has turned. The nets are down al¬ 
ready.” 

Nevertheless, the voice is not quite steady, 

The old man strangely smiles in the foggy 
light. 

Father and son walk homeward, hand in hand; 

Silence is on their lips, and silence on the land; 

In the cadaverous haze they seem to be 

Gigantic symbols of the invisible sea, 

Looming across grey meadows of eternity . . . 


[90] 


Autumns and springs ran through their 
calendars, 

And every sunset Carmus watched alone 
The scarlet chord sink to a semitone, 

And so break into pizzicati stars. 

Sometimes across the crescent afterglow 
A slender light floated, and even came 
Over the moveless reeds to where he stood. 
The veil would tremble with his trembling 
breath, 

Part like a cloud, evaporate like snow, 

Slip out between two thoughts, and leave 
him weeping. 

Mile over mile of marsh the same, 

The sea moaning its widowhood, 

A chill hand stretched from the sleeve of 
death, 

And Carmus groped back home as though he 
were sleeping. 


The desire 
for reunion 
with his im¬ 
mortal com¬ 
rade grows 
ever stronger, 


He half 
forgets the 
ecstasyhut 
he cannot 
rest , for as 
time passes 


What was I doing in the marsh that night? 
Memory smoulders to its lowest ember 
Still hissing softly in the half-burned log. 
Nine years ago! and yet I never quite 
Forget, although I never quite remember. 
Days drag, far better had I never known, 
For time is haunted, now I am alone. 

In this flat wilderness of sea and fog, 

Where nothing ends, and nothing is begun, 
Something eludes me like a hinted song. 

I am as one who gazed the sun too long; 

The world goes black before my dazzled mind, 
Yet have I gained no knowledge of the sun, 
Save that it makes men blind. 


The fury of the sunset scorched his veins, 

Dawn and midday found him on the sea, 

Urging his boat with nervous oars. 

But through spring twilight and thick autumn 
rains 

It was a phantom at the oars, not he. 

For he was waiting on disconsolate shores 

Where the grass stood shoulder-high, 

Till the sun’s last ray was spent. 

He watched for a token in the sky. 

The slow tides came and went. 

Life, who opened her doors, has closed them 
to her lover. 

The key of death was mine; I have lost it in 
the sea. 

I, who have sat at the banquet, am turned 
away still hungry; 

I, who was once a man, am half divinity. 


filling him 
with a divine 
discontent. 


I was so near divine, so dangerously human, 

That I was welcomed into the house beyond 
the stars. 

Now earth has turned against me; I am not of 
her children; 

The sea cries out, What monster is this that 
plies the oars? 

I am the reed uprooted, who drifted to far 
countries, 

Who spread her leaves like a seagull's wings 
and thought to fly; 

Dark currents have returned her to the 
familiar marshes, 

But now she has no roots; she can not live 
or die. 


Life, I have met you wandering at sunset in 
the marshes. 

I was a boy, I feared you, you quieted my 
fears; 

You lifted me to wisdom; you gave me all your 
secrets, 

Then chained me again in flesh, and locked 
me in with years. 


INTERLUDE: OCEAN 


Flung flat against the cliff and beaten back, 
Reared high white heads, procession vertical, 
Dashed on the rocks and washed away in 
black, 

Swirled into whirling foam, rise up and fall. 

Hunger and passionate despair and pain, 
Loneliness, memory, confused dismay, 

Flung up and washed away in waves again, 
Swirled on the cliffs of doom, burst into spray. 

Youth and delight and full-sailed hopes that 
tack 

Toward the green shore where Love has built 
his home, 

Dash on the crags and shiver into black, 
Crash to the rocks and crumble into foam. 

Beat fiercely, breath, against the jagged wall, 
Heart-pulse eternal, wear away the cliff, 
And you, young oarsman, as they rise and 
fall, 

Steer straight to sea in your adventurous skiff. 
[[ 95 ] 



Y> , 

H| 


xL 

\ u\l ■ 


L/l/lOll ' 

§ul 

* M 0 A M Gr-Jj /y 





















































































CANTO II 


It is spring in Fens, spring on the sea, 

Spring in the fabulous cities to the west, 
Spring in the royal gardens of Venily. 

The day and night with mute artillery 
Fling great havoc of colour through the sky; 
The dull green marshes sigh 
As the tide seeps through their sodden roots; 
Out of her nest, with an appalling cry, 

A heron shoots across the low red sun, and 
passes black 

Through the clouds, and vanishes in fire. 
Carmus turns his back, 

To find in the dark blue distance, something 
nearer 

The image of his desire. 

(Night, be thou the mirror 

To show the face I have not looked upon 

These many years. 

Night, night, hasten against the sun 
With silver spears.) 


Spring 

follows spring 
and the youth 
Carmus still 
searches for 
his immortal 
comrade , and 
watches the 
sunset agony 
of death over 
the Fens. 


The wind urges the flaming clouds across 

To the east. They are drifting fire-ships that 
toss 

Scarlet brands to harry the harbours of night. 

They sail to the dim horizon, they scatter fire; 

The skies are enkindled, the universe entire 

Flares in a blast of supernatural light. 

He shrinks from the glory he knows too well; 

He covers his face with his hands, but his 
soul is kindled; 

Within him there burn sunsets as terrible, 

Smiting the man to frenzy and fugitive 
passion 

That would leave the gods themselves trem¬ 
bling and ashen. 

When he opens his eyes the glare has dwindled. 

In the west the embers are growing duller. 

The glass-green east is ready for stars and 
moon. 

The sea has resumed its grey nocturnal colour, 

The marsh its grey nocturnal tune. 


“I will go to the mystic city 

Istis, and wait no longer on this shore. 

Life may be pitiless, but the gods have pity; 
I will pray the gods nor seek her any more.” 
Then he searches the sky with gaze grown 
dim, 

Hoping to tempt them into tempting him, 
And a light glows in the east, but it is only 
The swollen moon, rising august and lonely. 

Tides pass through the tall grass. 

Seasons flow in tireless stream. 

Suns sail from east to west. 

The wanderer merges in his quest , 

And the dreamer in his dream. 


He beholds a 
light in the 
east , and 
thinks it to be 
his dawn, but 
it is only the 
moonrise of 
mortal desire. 


He sets out 
toward the 
mystic city of 
Istis, hoping 
to find his 
beloved by the 
river of con¬ 
templation , 
but Istis , too , 
is subject to 
the moon. 


Forests and mountains after horizoned seas, 
Birdsong and waterfall in the glimmering 
glade; 

Carmus lifts up his heart to the trees, 

Calls them by name, kneels in their holy shade. 
They are strong, godlike people, proud and 
wise, 

Masters of the wind, dictators of the skies. 


One oak can dwarf the stature of a hill, 


One pine can talk far louder than the sea; 
Their feet are firm in immortality, 

Their hands can push the storm, or hold it still. 
Carmus hears their voices, he sees their eyes, 
He knows they look upon him friendlywise. 


Five days and nights he journeys, then he 
comes 

To the river Layis where Istis rises fair 

In the moonlight, shimmering tall across the 
river. 

He hears the priests beating the sacred drums 

Behind those columns so unreal they sway 
and quiver 

As the dull rhythm marches through the air. 

He hears low voices chanting in monotone. 

He too will chant in the Temple of the Moon 

Till a face floats up through mysteries of 
smoke and prayer. 

[ 99 ] 


By the river-bank a boat is moored among the 
ferns. 

Carmus jumps in and pushes off from the 
rustling shores. 

He rows out quickly into the liquid light, and 
churns 

The surface dimpling with gems behind his 
fiery oars. 

The flocks of the moon graze on the pebbly 
shoals of the river, 

The wind flits through the overhanging syca¬ 
mores. 

Above him loom tremendous columns, tier 
on tier, 

Shafts of high quietude that guard the mystic 
town, 

So lofty they taper to a point and disappear, 

Seeming to lift the earth, and bring the 
zenith down. 

So soaring, so austere, the mountain slinks 
beneath them, 

And the pilgrim feels abashed beneath that 
topless crown. 


[100 1 


Then file from the shadows, chanting, a line 
of spectral priests 

Approaching in pale parade, dwarfed by the 
awful roof; 

They are coming out to hail the Moon and 
sing her feasts. 

Carmus goes forward toward them, but 
with a soft reproof 

They turn him back; he must wait to see the 
ineffable goddess. 

They are ancient and serene, they hold them¬ 
selves aloof. 

Ahmes, the high-priest, chides him. “The in¬ 
most mystery 

Is not for your eyes yet, nor for my lips to tell. 

Go down the passage yonder, until you reach 
a tree 

With torches on its boughs. Beneath it is a 
well 

Fed by the springs of Layis, deeper than man 
can measure, 

Sit there and gaze into its waters, till the shell 


[ 101 ] 


“Of flesh is burned away by the Light of 
Lights, that makes 

Men worthy of the goddess. Silence till you 
know.” 

Carmus walks down the hall where every 
footstep wakes 

Clamouring echoes through the columns row 
on row. 

Alone and frightened, down long aisles of 
conspiring echoes, 

Till he beholds the tree whose branches shiver 
and glow. 

Hour by hour passes, and there is no time. 

His thoughts drown in the soundless well. 
His pulses freeze. 

Sight comes and goes. He hears the dreary 
chime 

Of bellbuoys charting the channels of infinite 
silences. 

They ring and die away, while stealthily 
comes nearer 

A droning hum like summer cloverfields of 
bees. 


And he meets 
only the 
images of his 
own fear. 


[ 102 ] 


The sound resolves in colour. On the well’s 
smooth surface 

Small bubbling sparks come up, and burst in 
whirling rays. 

Then suddenly a blue hand brushes away the 
nervous 

Flashes, and spreads a disc of palely luminous 
haze, 

Whereon a face appears, the face of the Be¬ 
loved, 

And looks up from the depths with an eternal 
gaze. 

Carmus cries out triumphantly, and leans 
far down. 

The water breaks in violent prisms with the 
tone. 

The face is petrified into a timeless frown 

Cut with abysmal lines across a brow of stone. 

Then one by one the torches on the tree expire. 

Murmurs rush through the dark where Car¬ 
mus trembles alone. 


[ 103 ] 


“O Ahmes, the seed thou gavest has bloomed, 
and it is nought. 

I know thou art full of age and wisdom; I 
bow my head. 

But the phantoms that assailed me from the 
well of thought 

Came not from the holy living, but from the 
unholy dead; 

I have wrought as thou badest, Ahmes; I 
fear thy wisdom failed thee; 

Thou didst promise light would dawn. Dark 
has come instead.” 

And Ahmes answered him in a voice as soft 
as flame, 

“I saw all this in a dream. The goddess bids 
thee depart. 

Thinkst thou that She, the peerless One, can 
be to blame? 

Go then to the city of Nalda, and learn their 
curious art; 

Their priests can raise the dead; their god is 
full of power; 

Each day they eat his flesh, and drink the 
blood of his heart.” 


[ 104] 


He travels on 
to the Chris¬ 
tian City of 
Nalda, 


Tides pass through the tall grass. 

Seasons flow in tireless stream. 

Suns sail from east to west. 

The wanderer merges in his quest , 

And the dreamer in his dream. 

Carmus took ship for Nalda; he sang for the 
rapture 

That flashed from the crested waves in the 
crystal morning. 

But when he saw the sunset, an echoed warn¬ 
ing 

Rang in his brain, and he covered his face 
with his hand. 

Not yet, not yet, the time to recapture 

The key that opens the door of existence; 

He watched till the dawn, and there in the 
distance 

Sparkled the slender peaks of the new god’s 
land. 


[ 105 ] 


But no, they were not the peaks of huge and 
delicate mountains; 

He stood beneath them, he climbed with 
marvelling eyes. 

They were gigantic fountains 

Whose waters had pushed higher and higher 
into the skies 

And were frozen to stone before they began to 
fall. 

The wind blew; he huddled against the wall; 

Surely those fragile points would snap and 
tumble 

To the frost mosaic of the roof below! 

A door swung in the cliff between the spires; 

He saw blue twilight splashed with jewelled 
fires, 

And far in the distance, six stars in a row. 

He heard an earthquake music rumble, 

And the voice of choirs. 


and in his 
ignorance 
believes the 
cathedral to 
be cut from 
the living 
Mountain. 


[ 106 ] 


There it was vast as the tall-vaulted night; 

When the door shut again, the day seemed 
small. 

Was that the new god’s hall? 

Was it there men tasted of divine delight, 

And ate their god, and drank his blood, to be 

Partakers of his own divinity? 

Bells poured quicksilver notes across the air. 

“If God be there, then Life is also there.” 

The hush is almost solid, pressed by centuries. 

It is something like the forest when the sun 
is low, 

When shining red and gold flare between the 
trees 

Whose trunks stand darkly vertical against 
the glow. 

Can those be men whose robes are woven out 
of fire? 

They must be gods, it is from them the 
glories flow. 


[ 107 ] 


The thunder of the god rolls forth; the crowds 
awaken; 

A hundred priests in gold and red and white 
are singing; 

The six stars on the holy rock are blurred and 
shaken 

By clouds of smoke that curl from globes the 
priests are swinging. 

And then three words wail out. Is it the name 
of God 

That humbles eviry head, and sets the bells 
ringing? 


It is God’s Blood! The high-priest drinks 
from a jewelled cup. 

It is God’s Flesh exalted! the white against 
the red. 

The mountains swim with sound. Man shall 
be lifted up, 

And by that blood be healed, and by that 
body fed. 

Carmus runs forward, crying, “I too would 
taste of Life!” 

He stops. Two eyes look down on him, and 
they are Dead. 


He is in¬ 
spired by fair 
ceremonies to 
seek his 
living 
comrade, 


[ 108 ] 


What terrible god has done this ruthless thing, 

And nailed this youth with nails through 
feet and hands 

Still stained with the blood and sweat of 
suffering? 

What God? . . . then suddenly Carmus 

understands. 

That is the god himself who hangs there slain; 

His priests have betrayed him. God is killed 
by his priests. 

They feed on his life in their endless feasts, 
and finds a They dye their robes in the blood of his pain, 

god whom the ^ ^ ^ 

crucified™* They rob him of godhead, they refresh 

Their weary souls with his blood and flesh. 

Carmus turns, and on nightmare feet 

Runs from the temple into the glaring street. 


[ 109 ] 



And someone said, “Even in this woeful place, 
I have not seen such woe as yours, young 
man.” 

He looked up, and beheld a woman’s face 
Laughing into his sorrow, and a fan 
Held to the chin with somewhat of disdain. 
He shuddered. “Do you know that they have 
slain 

Their god, and live upon his flesh and blood?” 
She frowned, as if she had not understood, 
Then smiled again: “No, fool, he is not dead. 
They think they have him on that tree, instead 
He slipped away from them long since, and 
they 

Devour themselves. It is themselves they 
slay. . . . 


and runs into 
the street 
where the 
•witch-woman 
of Vallamar- 
is is waiting 
for him. 


She tells him 
of the living 
God who has 
escaped the 
wiles of the 
priests, 


[ 110 ] 


and bids him 
disport him¬ 
self in her city, 
hoping thereby 
to go back 
herself , 


“What are you moaning here in Nalda for? 

Young men should be in Vallamaris; there 

Is the glint of life. This place is for the old,— 

I come from Vallamaris, and I know!” 

“There is life in Vallamaris?” “Nowhere 
more! 

Life, and life abundant in the air; 

Beauty and love for the asking, towers of 
gold, 

And queens and courtiers strolling to and fro.” 

“But I am looking for ... I come from 
Fens,— 

Perhaps my thoughts are not as other men’s.” 

“O yes! I know your province. I have been 

Once through those dolorous marshes. You 
have seen 

Something that haunts you? You have lost 
some meaning 

In life that you must find again, or perish? 

I know, but are you sure this dream you 
cherish, 

Recovered, would be even worth the gleaning? 


[Ill] 


Go then to Vallamaris, you will find 
Your secret, or else chase it from your mind. 
And after that, who knows? you may press 
on 


To Venily where I have never gone. 

In Nalda! O young fool, give me your 
chance! 


Give me the youth you waste! Let me go 
back! 

Still, I have had my share of life’s romance; 
Let the moon turn to blood, and the sun go 
black!” 


since those 
who have 
worn out 
their time in 
Vallamaris 
can return 
only through 
the magic of 
the chaste. 


Tides pass through the tall grass. 
Seasons flow in tireless stream. 
Suns sail from east to west. 

The wanderer merges in his quest , 
And the dreamer in his dream. 


[ 112 ] 


In Valla- 
maris he 
beholds the 
spectacle of 
earthly de¬ 
lights, which 
he does not 
understand, 


although a 
great drunk¬ 
enness of 
spirit bids 
him discard 
his identity 
and merge 
into the 
crowd, where 
everyone is 
but a looking- 
glass, reflect¬ 
ing his 
neighbour; 


Carmus in Vallamaris looks up at the stars; 

They do not seem important, they are far 
away. 

While garish torches flicker through the red 
bazaars, 

And the crowd goes by in a crested wave 
flashing with spray. 

There are colonnades of turquoise, towers 
sheathed with jewels, 

And palaces like anchored ships over the bay. 

He is hailed by ladies with green falcons on 
their wrists, 

And when they dance their silks hiss like the 
autumn grass. 

Sometimes they stop and bid him to their 
garden trysts; 

He dares not try to dance with queens, and he 
lets them pass. 

And one or two gaze long at him, and preen 
themselves 

Before his eyes as though he were a looking- 
glass. 


[ 113 ] 


He feels ashamed, not knowing why; he seems 
remote 

From all the glitter, and awkward as a foolish 
lad. 

He would rather be on the water yonder in 
his boat; 

How came he here among this folk so bravely 
clad? 

Behind the tawdry town the mountains lean 
and whisper, 

Three waiting dreams beyond the fleeting 
myriad. 

They pass in darkness as the laughing es¬ 
planades 

String beads of gold along the purple atmos¬ 
phere; 

For all the city lies beneath the feet of gods, 

They sleep, and she, the ever-wakeful, has 
no fear. 

They hear her voice as one unmeaning or¬ 
chestra, 

But near her throbbing heart, each instrument 
is clear. 


[ 114 ] 


Plunge into pulsing dances, trumpet and horn 
and drum, 

Make sentimental drinkers weep, soft violin. 

The doors of taverns jar and swing, the 
rhythms come 

Of shuffling feet outside, and dancing feet 
within. 

Am I that Carmus heard nearby, a separate 
spirit, 

Or am I but a small vibration of the din? 

He sees the towers riddled with windows 
fiercely gleaming 

Until the walls are only slender webs of black; 

And one by one, single faces break from the 
streaming 

Crowd, take on their lonely lives, and give 
him back 

Glance for his glance, until he names them 
from a distance, 

As bold Chaldeans charted the tangled zodiac. 


[ 115 ] 


Streets, streets, streets, unfolding in festoons, 

Filled with flames, and phantoms, angels, 
beasts, 

Unchanging in eternal change under the 
moons, 

Moonrise, moonset for ever, and for ever 
feasts 

Of anguish and desire, amazement and for¬ 
getting, 

Death and the search for dawn through all 
the warring easts. 

And yet there is something rising between us, 
I do not know 

If it hatred be of a stranger such as I, 

Or if perhaps I can not mingle in the flow 

Of crowds coming and going under the mortal 
sky. 

Something there is that fills my nerves with 
the music of April, 

They cannot hear; their deafness means 
hostility . . . 


[ 116 ] 


until the 
woman of 
Vallamaris , 
disguised 
with the 
reflection of 
his own 
purity , be¬ 
witches him , 


Someone is coming down the noisy street 
In a glimmer of silence louder than any sound; 
There is a music rising out of the ground. 
Someone is coming down the noisy street 
Swathed in a tremulous veil of mystery; 
There is a music out of the caves of the sea. 
Someone is floating down the street 
Immaculate through the brawling throng; 
His heart leaps with a starlight song; 

She glides by on ghostly feet, 

Her veil brushes him like a cloud, 

Speechless, he follows through the crowd, 
Beyond the torches, down a muddy lane, 
Between tall trees singing remembered rain, 
And through a gate opening to a court 
Sequestered from the world, a garden port 
From the labour of the streets’ impatient tide. 
Then up a mossy stairway to a door 
Showing a shadowed room. They step inside. 
The blood goes through his eardrums with a 
roar; 

His hands are cold as stone, he can not think. 


[ 117 ] 


He stands in the marshes, on the brink 
Of supreme flight into the sunset-dawn. 
One fear alone still shakes him like a reed: 
Will she vanish, now in his hour of need? 

A white hand rises pale as the moon from a 
blur 

Of mist. Slowly, slowly, the veil is drawn 
From the face. He can not stir. 

His senses fail struggling to look at her. 

He claws at his eyes to clear their throbbing 
sight, 

And sees a withered face, 

One half scarred red, the other ashen white, 
Pulled from the glaring eyes in a starved 
grimace. 

The yellow teeth open, and wheezing laughter 
Spurts from the mouth, and words half 
choked with mirth. 

He looks and hears and can not turn away. 
“You came to Vallamaris; I came after, 
And we shall go together through the earth . . 


1118 ] 


What! and have you forgotten that woeful 
day 

Outside the grey cathedral? I was there. 

You ran weeping and shouting across the 
square. 

Ah, you remember now. I bade you go 

To Vallamaris? Well, I too came back. 

You did not know me then, but now you 
know;— 

Your woman of the marshes,—that is I!” 

And then she laughs as if her throat would 
crack, 

And spreads her arms into a wild embrace. 

Carmus cries out in fear, “That is a lie! 

I have seen your face, and I have seen her 
face.” 

Swift as the wind he plunges out of the room, 

Down the slippery stairs, and under the stars. 

He hears her following through the gloom, 

Step for his step, neither slower nor faster. 

He flings through the court and crashes into 
the gate; 


It is closed, bolted with seven iron bars. 

He bludgeons himself against it, mad with 
disaster; 

Step by step she approaches, steady as fate. 
A hand, bitterly cold, is on his throat, 

A breath is beating into his tingling ear, 
His heart is stabbed with an icy spear, 

His body begins to float. 

“Witch! Monster! let me go!” 

Her laughter explodes against his brain, 
They crash together, frenzied with blood and 
pain, 

Lashing each other to and fro. 


The earth slips softly away; he is borne on 
the flow 

Of a tide of music whirling them round and 
round. 

His head swirls with the swirling sound. 


and in a 
wonderful 
manner , 
transforms 
him into a 
part of the 
carnival , 


Into the garden filters the glow 


Of the rising moon, and torches flare. 


[ 120 ] 


Under the trees in the twinkling air 
Courtiers and queens are dancing sprightly; 
Bracelets jingle, silks lightly 
Hiss like the wind in the autumn grass. 
Carmus is dancing; a girl is dreaming 
Into his eyes; he smiles in hers, 

And sees himself in a looking-glass,— 

A splendid sight! he is clad in gleaming 
Silk like the bravest of courtiers. 


The wanderer sets his haven afar, 

And the dreamer vanishes into his dream; 

A cloud flies over the quested star, 

And clear through the dark our torches gleam. 


While the tides pass through the tall grass, 


while a cynic 
music per¬ 
verts the 
theme of his 
wanderings 
into a dance. 


This night, this moment, silver-drenched 
Call to the travellers that pass, 

Turn them aside, and their thirst is quenched. 


[ 121 ] 


Drink deep, life’s fathomable wells 
Are almost dry, the hour is late. 

The cock crows, and the first bells 
Stir the guard of the sun’s gate. 

Suns go sailing from east to west, 

The seasons flow in tireless stream, 

But thou art the earth’s dying guest; 

She is thy truth, the rest, thy dream. 

Take her, and live, nor turn away 
For a hand of mist, her hand of clay. 

Night wanes, the sun has crossed 

The loom where the dawn is spun in frost. . . 


[ 122 ] 


But the 
charm breaks 
when the 
winter comes , 
and once 
more Carmus 
is alone. 


Winter comes with sudden snow. 

In Vallamaris hungry foxes bark. 

The laughter and the dance are dreams of 
long ago 

Dreamed by the marble dead who slumber in 
the dark. 

Carmus stands alone in the ruined city, and 
shivers 

As the wind drifts the snow in the fountains of 
the park. 

He looks where the trees are interlaced on the 
wintry west. 

He cries: “Come now from the desolate 
mountains heaped with snow! 

The wandering heron returns to the marshes 
and knows her nest. 

The wandering man would sleep, but still you 
bid him go 

Into the new horizons that fade as he ap¬ 
proaches. 

We move no more than the reeds that bend 
to the ocean’s flow. 


[ 123 ] 


“Through labyrinths of many gods and many 
faiths 

I have sought, but your doors are closed, 
that once were open wide. 

I have cast my youth at your feet, suffered 
a hundred deaths, 

But you make me less than a man, who once 
was deified. 

What more do you want of me, O Life, what 
more can I give you? 

The snow is your only answer; for this have 
we lived and died.” 

Tides pass through the tall grass. 

Seasons flow in tireless stream. 

Suns sail from east to west. 

The wanderer merges in his quest , 

And the dreamer in his dream. 


[ 124 ] 


INTERLUDE: THE SONG OF FREMA, 
THE EARTH-SPIRIT. 


In the snow I found him, 

When death was waiting to harvest him in 
his sleep. 

The whirling winds were whetting their 
scythes round him, 

The sheaves were piling deep. 

With love I crowned him. 

The winter slid from our roof, spring opened 
our door. 

But a mightier love than mine had caught 
and bound him,— 

A love he had known before. 

I would not claim him. 

He was claimed by a dream I never had 
understood. 

And at last I played him false, pretending to 
blame him, 

That he might go if he would. 


[ 125 ] 


I overcame him, 

And sent him forth unscathed in his own es¬ 
teem. 

He was a restless gull, I could not tame him, 
Nor clip the wings of his dream . . 

What more, O gods who fling 
Our joys to dust and mould? 

What more can I give to win me peace of 
heart? Behold, 

I make you a burnt offering! 


[ 126 ] 



V'V'.'v' f 
Croc'.*. 


VVVN 

if* 


^VVV ^ 


xA ' I 

Wv> Jfo 

|M \ r, \ \ \JS1B fS ■J v ^N._ H Sp / y ' 


%a J5I^ : v */2\Jyw 1 



^ymmmSfiMrfsr-^ t Jv-Tr 

Hi % vvCA u\li\»rffllf * i 


i«l VI 1 1 t u> vl Hi 1 n 1 I pm^JL* Bi i 



























































CANTO III 


High doors of quiet open, and the King 
Of Venily waits in the empty hall; 

He knows what Carmus has to sing; 

He knows the source and end; 

All things that have been, all that will befall, 
Live in his consciousness, appear and blend. 

“All men that move in your domain 
Must come at last to you, the moveless mind, 
Yours, 0 King, is the Naldan’s pain, 

The image that escapes the Istian’s thought; 
You see their vistas clear where they are blind, 
And toilless, still create what they have 
wrought. 

“You know your song of Venily. 

Know you my song of Fens? that too is 
yours, 

You are the forest, every tree 
Gives you its voice to swell the mighty rhyme. 
Hear now the voice of the tree on the out- 
land moors, 

Singing to itself on the fringe of time. . 


The man 
Carmus after 
long be¬ 
wilderment 
has reached 
the Venily of 
inspiration 
and, fulfil¬ 
ment. 


where he tells 
of his journey 
to the divine 
intelligence: 


[ 127 ] 


how when the 
wind swept 
away the 
revellers he 
resolved to 
push on 
toward 
Venily , 


. . . From Vallamaris, the last of the 

happy host 

Departed; I was alone in the haunted town. 
Dead houses stared at me, the single ghost 
Who walked black-footed through the snow. 
Marking the blank streets up and down, 
Where I had strolled not long ago 
Arm in arm with incarnate summer. 

Where were they, the harlot and mummer? 
Where were they, the masquer and dancer? 
Gusts of snow whirled strangely ahead, 
Phantoms dancing, wind for an answer; 
Wherever they were, for me they were dead. 
The mountain smiled in the stiff blue air, 
The glacier sang a thin refrain,— 

“We have seen this planet white and bare, 
We shall see it bare and white again.” 
Finally I said, soon will the winter 
Heap upon me, heavier than stone; 
Hooves of the storm stamp in the night; 
Man is crushed cruelly between 
Solid sky and solid earth, 


[ 128 ] 


Grinding the little life that defies them. 
Venily is far; fierce is the cold; 

Yet if I tarry, tombs are open,— 

Better the song, seeking its hearer 

Than a coward corpse caught in the frozen 

Crust till the thaw thins the winter. 

The fourth night fell, and found the wanderer 
Far bewildered, a wavering ship 
Rudderless, chartless, reeling in the thick 
Uneven snow that snarled beneath him. 
Shadows were blue, blown with the snow¬ 
drifts, 

Pines stood dark desolately whining, 

Oaks roared, racked with the wind. 

Then as the twilight twisted the shadows, 
He heard the wails of witches and warlocks, 
He heard the night gnashing her teeth, 

Her flung hair heavy with hurtling blizzards. 
He saw eyes flashing, flames in the north; 
His feet stumbled, faint with nightmare; 
Swarms of bees burned him with ice; 

Faces of the dead danced in the flakes, 


and the 
blizzard 
caught him, 
and 

phantoms as¬ 
sailed him, 


[ 129 ] 


until he 
should have 
perished 


Shrieking and laughing at the lorn traveller. 
Who was the man madly vanishing 
In the blare of the blast that blew the world 
out? 

Was it a warrior waging battle 
Against the furious fiends of winter? 

Was it a wizard working wonders 
Cloaking himself in a cloud of tempest? 

No, it was a minstrel, a man of music, 

A man of dreams; dread was upon him. 

He longed to sleep, lured by the snow 
That sang a little lilt in the darkness; 
“Wanderer, rest warm in my arms; 

Homeless you wander; here is your home.” 
Bells rang faintly, beautiful with distance. . . . 

I woke to the sound of flames and someone 
singing. 

Slowly I swam up through the dark, 

And in the light, I shut my eyes, still clinging 
To the hope that I should wake in another 
sphere. 

I had closed the book of life without a mark 
On pages where the meaning was so clear. 


[ 130 ] 


The sun beat scarlet on my lids; I stirred. 
Footsteps ran across the room, 

And then I heard 

A question: “Are you still asleep?” 

Why should I answer from the tomb 
To face again the fields that none may reap? 

I opened my eyes. Hail the sun! 

Hail the dawn! yea, it was She, 

Poised on a bar of light. Eternal One 
At last the years crumble away. 

It was you that set me free 

And opened the garden gates of day. 


but for the 
earth-maiden 
Frema, who 
delivered 
him from 
death , 


and in whom, 
again , he 
thought to 
find his be¬ 
loved. 


[ 131 ] 


Face that I have met 

In time’s first twilight on primeval shores,— 
You have forgotten, Frema? I too shall forget, 
Now the new year wakes, and the old may 
fly. 

Hear the denial the wind roars, 

As the fire dissparkles piercing radii. 

You are the answer to all questionings, 

The harvest of the laboured season; 

Safe in your house the soul can fold its wings, 
And the heart slow to a calmer pace. 

You are the miracle that mocks at reason, 
The star that rises over time and space. 

You smile to hear me, you who are so wise 
Feign that you do not understand; 

And while you speak, God reaches from your 
eyes, 

Unlocks the door and bids the spring awake. 
All things you touch with your unconscious 
hand 

Take on divinity for Beauty’s sake. 


[ 132 ] 


(Winter passes, do I hear 
The sun’s intrepid cannoneer 
Bombarding every loaded branch 
Into a noisy avalanche? 

Swamps are crimson, maple blood 
Reddens through each folded bud,— 
Hark, Frema! silver-clear, 

The call of the first pioneer!) 

The rotten snow showed here and there a 
patch 

Of muddy soil with starting green. 

A hundred times each day we paused to catch 
Some note that promised the warm sun. 
But joys in nature slowly came between 
The snowbound joy that we had known as one. 

I found myself at dusk persuading 
My spirit from the radiance it sought 
In the wide sunset, for I saw it fading 
Out of the face that I had loved so well. 
What was the subtle change those months 
had wrought 

To dim the image of the miracle? 


[ 133 ] 


Again disil¬ 
lusioned, he 
was driven 
forth by his 
unrest at the 
coming of 
spring. 


It was as if that face had been a mirror 
In which the Eternal cast her pure reflection, 
And mortal eyes beholding, thought it clearer 
Than the fair flesh that love half-deified, 
Till mortal desires breathed in that direction, 
Misted the surface, and the image died. 

Vaguely I was invaded by the stress 
That gave no respite to my spirit. 

Mute prisoners, we two could only guess 
The chains that held each other so alone. 
Her silence grew so hollow I could hear it 
Echo her thoughts like a grey wall of stone. 

The soul died out of love little by little, 

And as the flesh grew more insistent, joys 
Grew thin, and patience brittle, 

And broke with a snap between our eyes. 
One night there flared the lightning that de¬ 
stroys, 

And after the fire, the sullen ashes of surmise. 


[ 134 ] 


Yet spring was on the heath blowing her horns, 
And the summons of her music moved 
Our hearts to push out buds among the thorns 
And bloom suspended between love and lust. 
Filled with earth-melody, our bodies loved; 
Our thoughts fled one another in disgust. 

One morning early, the first bird astir 
Sang three clear notes from summer’s core. 

I woke, went in, and looked at her; 

Her mouth was angry and drawn. 

Softly I opened the door 
And walked out through the glister of the 
dawn. 

Venily should never hear my song; 

The music had all died. 

Yet hark to the triumph that uprose along 
The forest ways and the path by the canal! 
Music enough in the green ripe countryside, 
No need of my voice in that full chorale. 


[ 135 ] 


In the 
twilight he 
saw what he 
thought to he 
the l amp of 
his immortal 
comrade, 


Once more I was drifting on without a goal, 
The first grey hairs already on my head, 
The winter snows unmelted in my soul. 
Why had I ever gone from Fens? 

I thought to see more clearly, and instead 
The farther I went, the thicker grew the lens. 

Night came, and where the sunset faded out 
Lingered a bloody scar across the sky. 

The chill of boyish doubt 
Ran through my veins with reminiscent dread. 
Should I go forward? Should I turn and fly? 
Darkly a whip-poor-will sang overhead; 

The sound scattered my terror, and I felt 
The good familiar earth beneath my feet. 

No evil and fantastic monsters dwelt 
Horribly in that tangled green,— 

Rather it was a kingdom, all complete, 

That moved in beautiful routine. 


[ 136 ] 


I called to the bird, he whistled back again, 

Articulate as speech could never be. 

Up in the sky mounted the stain 
As though the sun had turned back from the 
west. 

Smoke and glare confused the galaxy, 

And even shook the forest to gaunt unrest. 

I climbed a hill; in the vale below me burned 
Campfires in a gleaming ring. 

Men rose from shadow, for a moment turned 
Flame-colour; armour flashed, hands flickered 
red. 

Who was this army? No man but the King 
Could mass such living hosts,—were they 
the dead? 

Then three long notes from a horn, three sob¬ 
bing notes. 

The hush crumbled, hung for a moment dumb. ^ ^ M 
A shout from a hundred thousand throats, h .? j a \[ e 

light into the 

And the mountain shivered with the billow- f ^ °f 

battle, 

ing sound. 

One pulse between them throbbed a drum, 

The heart of war began to thud and pound. 


[ 137 ] 


Who are you, watchers and warriors, moving 
to battle? 

The birches shake to feel them march, the 
mountain sighs. 

Drums beat, swords jangle, cannon jolt and 
rattle, 

The ancient night lifts up her head, and 
breathes Alas! 

Who are you, youthful warriors? against dis¬ 
torted skies 

The silhouettes of horsemen and tangled 
ranks pass. 

Then thunder like hooves of wild horses 
stampeding on infinite prairies, 

Flashes all over the sky, exploding in spiral 
flowers; 

Lights climb through the midnight, trailing 
delicate stems, 

And hang in stars in the leaves of the tallest 
trees of Paradise. 

A swaying serpent heavily sags over the hills, 


[ 138 ] 


His rumbling weight wearing away the soil 
to the rocks; 

He is gorged with cringing victims, I hear 
them shouting and crying. 

All the clouds of the universe clash in the 
caves of chaos 

With a crash so fearful I can only feel, not 
hear it. 

Each drop of that ruinous rain is heavy as 
molten lead, 

And grinding into the ground bursts with a 
heat so horrible 

That all the strength of the soil flares in a 
flaming harvest, 

One murderous ripening, blighting the yield 
of a myriad years, 

Springs, summers, autumns, run through in 
a single second,— 

Henceforth there will always be winter in 
the heavily-harvested land. 

A host of men go howling by, their faces are 
green 


a battle of 
ghosts re¬ 
hearsed end¬ 
lessly by the 
living dead. 


[ 139 ] 


And drenched with dripping earth; their 
mouths are agape with madness; 

They trample me, hurrying by, a tremendous 
herd of nightmares, 

Drawing with bony hands, drunkenly bid¬ 
ding me join them; 

I falter and fall, they tramp me down with 
their iron feet. 

Their ranks finally pass, they are being 
fiercely pursued 

By a brawling flock of fluttering crows with 
broken wings. 

Blood drips from their beaks; they drag at 
the bodies of the slain, 

Some of them toppling dead themselves with 
a stopped croaking. 

Straining to flee, I strive forward, an anchored 
ship 

In the shouting wind of panic that pushes me 
from my anchorage. 

My feet are fixed; I can not move from the 
merciless mooring. 


1140 ] 


Then passed I into a sleep, and when I awoke 
The valley was breathless under the frightened 
sun 

Floating its rays along the strata of smoke, 
Showing the country desolate, calm as snow, 
White bones on the blasted earth; the battle 
was done,— 

Was it only yesterday, or years ago? 

I will go back over the plain 

And find the house of my Love, I said. 

Lest I go down to death among the slain, 
Nameless among the nameless. 

I will go back; love shall rise from the dead. 
It was I who sullied the image, she was 
blameless. 


In the morn¬ 
ing he sought 
to return to 
the love of 
Frema, 


[ 141 ] 


The forest where I had heard the whip-poor- 
will 

But yesternight, was a split and twisted mass 

Of stumps and charcoal against the hill 

Whose soil was pitted and scarred like the 
face of the moon. 

There was not a bush, a leaf, nor a blade of 
grass, 

Pillars of silence held the dark roof of noon. 

These writhen trees died with a scream of pain. 

Their skeleton arms attest their agonies. 

And there they will reach, those arms lifted 
in vain 

For ever, praying for mercy that never was 
given. 

Beneath them the bones of young men torn 
like the trees, 

And skulls with accusing eyeholes glaring at 
heaven. 


[ 142 ] 


Resurrection seemed to pour 
From the first green I found after those miles 
Of trudging down the extinct crater of war. 
And here were saplings, wrinkled with the 
heat 

But still in leaf. Beautiful were the smiles 
Wind-rippled over the first field of wheat. 

Just beyond the next turn in the road 
The low-eaved house is waiting for me. 

Love is a pioneer, her safe abode 
Confronts the wilderness of cynic death. 

My heart outran my feet, that bore me 
Swift as the wind on hilly Leoneth. 

The chimney of the house was standing there, 
Gaunt sentry over a smoking hole. 

The fireplace gaped in the air; 

The fallen hearth had left a yellow scar. 
The bushes round the house were black as 
coal, 

A half-burned board protruded like a spar. 


[ 143 ] 


but he could 
never return 
for that was 
long ago, and 
scattered in 
ashes. 


Frema! Frema! Frema! so I cried 
All night, not knowing how time fell away. 
No answer but the slide 
Of ashes in the ruined heaps. 

And no one ever answered; to this day 
A mystery guards the region where she sleeps. 

The labyrinth whose intertwining ways 
I followed thus so vainly, has its plan, 

And though I seem bewildered in the maze, 
There is a thread that guides me to the door. 
Sometimes I lose it; other times I scan 
The lofty portal I have known before. 

And even now the great door swings ajar. 
The lintel widens in a line of light. 

Who stands there? Drop your veil, eternal 
Star. 

Come forth, O cloud-enwrapt! 

A tidal wave of darkness overwhelms the 
height. 

We fumble in the depths. The thread is 
snapped. 


[ 144 ] 


INTERLUDE 


It is so calm, the sea itself, asleep, 

Lies like a lover-trodden path that bounds 
The garden of the world. 

Sink thou, wrought soul, into a dream serene 
and deep 

Wherein the earth's loud company of sounds 
Faint slumber-curled 

Beyond the last horizon where the senses keep 
Their nervous vigil for the cares that rise 
To fill our ears, or hold our weary eyes. 

Is there a dream so flooded by the spirit 
That we can dive into its still delight 
Beyond earth's flare and crash, 

Without a voice or song insistent that we 
hear it, 

Without a colour to persuade our sight, 

Or dim seductive flash 
To stir some reminiscent joy, and so endear it 
To the fond hearts, that waking into pain 
Dispel this peace and bid us feel again? 


[ 145 ] 


If such there be, profound, ineffable, 

Let it be mine, for I have stood too long 
Facing the restless ocean. 

The young moon leads the captive tide with¬ 
out a swell; 

The shadowed clouds have hung since ves- 
persong 

Without a single motion. 

Let me escape; nor even such voices as a shell 

Holds in its throbbing emptiness, reply 

With hints of memoried mortality. 

Then for a quiet moment, let me live 

That life in which the world’s tremendous 
psalm 

Sinks to a fitful breath; 

Freed of all thought, know not that time is 
fugitive. 

Rather that all eternity is calm, 

Calmer than death. 

And neither hear nor see, remember nor 
forgive, 

But deep within my teeming spirit feel 

The great rotation of the infinite wheel. 


[ 146 ] 




























































































































































CANTO IV 


The mountain broods. . . . 

It is silent beneath it, beyond it, and in those 
woods 

There is silence. 

It is afternoon. . . . 

Late afternoon, late autumn, the world is 
strewn 

In the valleys. 

Look to the clear northwest. 

The sun has touched the rim of the rounded 
sea. 

The horizontal rays on Venily 
Silver her columns. 

Serene on its airy crest, 

The Salnka, that high temple, calls the night, 
Spreading aspiring wings for a final flight 
Into the sunset. 


The old man 
Carmus, at 
the end of his 
journey , sits 
on the 
Mountain, 


and beholds 
the sunset 
over Venily. 


[ 147 ] 


Smoke from the altars arises blue 
Above the trees and huddled mass of stone. 
Persistent bells cleave keenly through 
The city’s multitudinous tone. 

From this exalted distance, all 
The royal town is harmonized in one; 

One body with a communal 
Response to the retreating sun; 

One soul, yet sheltering 

All the contentious minds who will compete 
With song before the King. 

Pale priests of Istis, stealthy as the dead, 
And Naldans, shouting hymns from street 
to street, 

And courtiers and jades 

From Vallamaris, autumn-harvested. 

Life in a myriad fleshly masquerades, 

So various, so strangely one, 

That seasons just begun 
Repeat the idiom of the dead. 


[ 148 ] 


Last year, a century hence, this afternoon, 
Waves on the same tide, following the moon. 

Carmus watches night 

Flow sluggishly, a river filled with ships, 

Each with a single light. 

First vanishes the city, then the sea, 

And then the plain below the mountain slips 
Into the dark upwelling. 

They are lighting gradual lamps in Venily; 
In every winding street, in every dwelling, 
The lights come on with soft surprise,— 
Those are the city’s eyes, 

Watching the sky, watching the sea, 

And searching in her heart, where man by man 
Passes the human caravan. 

Where are you going, nameless men? 

What is your destination? 

Through Istis and through Nalda we have gone, 

Through many cities; now in Venily 

We rest before new journeyings. And then? 

Back in imagination 

With the receding tide, until the dawn 

Takes us and scatters us upon the sea. 


[149] 


Carmus feels wind-fingers touch his hair, 
The mother’s hands soft on the tired child; 
Hands often so severe, and now so mild 
As the farewells rise up the crisped air. 
Always at parting time, we are beguiled 
By a nostalgic sorrow; all seems fair 
That lies behind us, and the long despair 
That wept, becomes the brief content that 
smiled. 

Though many men shall die, and few shall live, 
Mortals and deities have common birth; 
Dying, the clay; living, the soul of earth. 
And though the earth herself is fugitive, 
And nursed unprofitable children, she 
Is also mother of immortality. 

Out of the marsh where spring by spring 
New reeds take root, arise, flourish, and fade, 
There come the restless immortals, travelling 
Forth to the new horizons, unafraid. 

While the tides pass through the tall grass 
They push through the tangled marts and wars 
Steady as stars through a dance of meteors. 


[ 150 ] 


The old man sits in his mountain garden, 
knowing 

How thin the wall between him and the sun. 
He yields to the memory-haunted breezes 
blowing 


As darkness 
comes on, he 
sees ever 
clearer, as 
the memories 
of his life 
return in 
their true 
meaning. 


Him back along the road he journeyed on. 


Behind him rise the black inviolate heights, 
Beneath him, the gold filigree of lights, 


And, to his inner vision, something more. 


Memory stretches like a corridor 
Thronged with the busy shadows of his race;— 
Or is it but two mirrors face to face, 
Reflecting to infinity? 

He sees the nations wedged in war, 

Futile expeditions back and forth, 

Thinkers stagnant in philosophy, 

Ships sailing south and north 
Over the sea. 


[151 ] 


His immortal 
comrade is 
there, also, 
but he is no 
longer im¬ 
patient to see 
her, for he 
knows that 


the hour of 
reunion is 
near, 


He looks far down the vista, and he knows 
That at the end, unveiled, there waits a form 
Clear as the rain-washed sky after a storm, 
The face of wisdom, the perpetual rose. 

She is the promise of his life fulfilled, 
Godhead, for whom he tried so long to build 
A temple of his life, for whom he went 
Down twilight paths of fear and banishment. 

He will not raise his eyes to look at her; 

It is enough to know that she is there. 

An hour or two, the earthly scene will blur 
And twinkle out across the thickening air. 
She is the everlasting, if he look 
At once or later, she will be the same. 

His place is marked, and though she close 
the book 

She cannot now efface a deathless name. 


[ 152 ] 


“Now while I may, let me behold the glitter 
And dazzling pageant of the world’s bravado, 
For memory makes sweet what once was bitter, 
And over it all hovers the unseen shadow 
Of Her who waits revealed at the end of space. 
I shall not hasten to behold her face; 

She chose me, and she cannot, at the last, 
Cast me away where the charnel dead are 
cast. 

“For I remember now our old communion. 
She is the genius of my discontent; 

The divine half, impatient for reunion; 

And fearing lest the mortal blandishment 
Should come between her and her own re¬ 
flection 

And so retard her struggle toward perfection, 
She drove me through the land, nor let me 
stay 

In any place, lest I take root in clay. 


and desires to 
gaze once 
again at the 
unreal 
pageant of 
mortality 
from which he 
has climbed. 


[153 ] 


“ Clear voice through all confusion, far and 
thin, 

But clear, through all the murk, for ever clear; 
Sometimes so high it climbed to where begin 
Those rarer notes that just escape the ear 
And turn to rainbow green and red and gold; 
Sometimes a deep vibration, slowly rolled 
Under our senses, till in the profound 
Depths of the mind it enters without sound. 

“Or in some hushed and holy interval, 
Beside the bed of death, or love’s first waking, 
We start to hear that unexpected call 
Cast like a stone in silent waters, shaking 
The surface of our thoughts to waves that pour 
On, on, to break at last on what far shore? 
Or sometimes in our purer days, we hear 
It like a sudden thrush ring strangely near. 


[ 154 ] 


“Now flashing by so we shall not forget, 
Now hiding, lest we should recall too much; 
Drawing us onward without respite, yet 
Keeping just out of hearing, sight and touch. 
Now she demands we sing of her, and from 
Our lyre she strikes the song, and smites us 
dumb; 

Until we learn that in the sensuous earth 
Silence alone bespeaks her final worth. 

“An immortal casts her images, yet few 
Retain the mark of their celestial race. 

Souls die as well as bodies, and a new 
Image is cast to take the other’s place, 
Until there come the man who will not die, 
Who builds a tower of personality 
From the world’s best, refined by discontent, 
And justifies divine experiment. 


[ 155 ] 


“Then be it known that they are few who live 
Beyond the number of their mortal days. 
Eternal powers avenge not nor forgive. 
Beyond all supplication and all praise 
They cast their shadows on oblivion; 

The shadows pass with life’s uncertain sun; 
Except those strong who cannot be destroyed, 
And in their turn cast shadows down the void. 

“At the journey’s end we cry, ‘Why came we 
here?’ 

For looking back along the travelled day, 
We see that what we sought in this high sphere 
Was walking at our side the entire way. 
Yet, had we not gone on, should we have seen 
The presence? Would there not have come 
between 

Our eyes and her the subtle tapestry 
Whose patterns seem more beautiful than she? 


[ 156 ] 


“Only here from the mountain can we view 
The long perspective of the road we followed; 
Down there, the small was great, the false 
was true, 

And all but the dream that drove us on was 
swallowed. 

The search itself was its fulfilment; now 
Poised in farewell on earth’s star-crested brow, 
We can afford her our still-eager eyes, 

Nor haste to claim the inevitable prize. 

“Earth, I have wandered through you in a 
dream 

That kept your fair adventure fresh in bloom; 
Had I surrendered to your smiling scheme, 
Ere this you would have been my wayside 
tomb. 

Now are you glorious from the windy height, 
Your cities flowing into lakes of light, 

Your strife subdued, and all your agonies 
Hushed with thin music, overleaved with 
trees. 


[ 157 ] 


“It is not to discard you and your joys,— 
Rather to taste them all, but not to stay 
Floating in stagnant water that destroys 
with a great The swiftness of the soul, and clogs its way. 

pity for 

those who. The beauties of the world are earned and spent 

shall vanish , 

hif d own htin By one transmuting them with discontent; 
To sing perfection in their outward glance 
Is to deny their last significance. 

“You are the veiled one now, for Life unveiled 
Awaits the signal from her brother’s eyes; 
But I am thinking of the seas I sailed,— 

Hear how the ancient winds know me, and 
rise 

Rustling the leaves overhead in the arbour, 
Hoping to tempt the old ship from the 
harbour; 

They are warm and salt, they carry back to 
me 

The drowsy sound of the reeds singing to 
the sea.” 


[ 158 ] 


The night wheels through its planetary course 
And cries farewell to the responding trees; 
A rasping motion in the gorse 
Betrays the outposts of the dawn, 

That creep on hands and knees 

Over the mountain, down the valley-lawn. 

At last the city sleeps. 

Her lights diffuse into a single taper 
Sinking with night whose vigil one man keeps. 

And he still searches the dim corridor, 
Where phantoms vanish from the littered 
floor, 

Their ghostly lives released 
In the early vapour. 

The mountain broods. . . . 

It is silent beneath it, beyond it, and in those 
woods 

There is silence. 


[ 159 ] 


Look to the clear northeast! 


So he watches 
till the Dawn. 


The mountain wakes. 

A triangle of infinite colour breaks 
Over the summit. 

A voice passes 

Singing through the autumn leaves and the 
tall grasses. . . . 

Dawn. 


[ 160 ] 


Copenhagen, Denmark, 
November 29, 1920 — 
February 24, 1921. 





































* .t 

• ... * >'-V- 

- 4 t ?• • 

. : • 






























































